5th grade = hellians
Today was a full day, in a 5th grade class from hell.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. Not all of the kids were Satan's helpers. The morning started off with me walking in to the office, only to find that there was no secretary today, so I wasn't able to sign in, and there wasn't an attendance sheet for my class. A nice gentleman walked me to my room, only to find that it was locked.. He went to get the janitor, who was on her smoke break, and assured me she would be by in 5 minutes. 8-9 minutes pass.. I'm now down to 20 minutes until school starts. I walk back down to the office to let them know I was still waiting to get in the classroom, so they paged her and she let me in. Fortunately, the teacher left excellent plans, and the first 45 minutes the kids were in art in another room so I had time to read over the math lesson, and familiarize myself with where things were in the room.
So, the kids return from art. "G" tells me that "I" threw his hat into the toilet, and K is telling me that W called him names, etc etc. I didn't realize 5th graders were such tattle tails. I get them settled down to do a quick 5 minute warm up in small groups. Somehow in the 30 seconds I wasn't facing the middle of the room, "I" had disassembled a marker, pulled out the filament, and had turned 75% of his desk green by wiping the filament all over his desk. Awesome. I ask him to clean it off and join his group. I teach the math lesson, which unfortunately for me, involved math manipulatives. Everyone with classes has stuck two isoceles triangles in to their glasses, and those who don't are either holding up triangles to their eyes to make glasses, or making towers or pictures out of the shapes. While they are working, "I" is stabbing his neighbor with a pencil, scribbling on other people's name tags, bouncing his pencil sharpener on his desk, and just being generally disruptive. Somewhere during the math time, he asks to use the restroom. Another boy goes after he got back, only to inform me that "I" put soap all over the boys bathroom floor. Obviously this boy is outta control, so I send him to the office.
After their morning recess, he returns to class, only to be sent back down to the office after about 15 minutes because he is again threatening his neighbors with a sharpened pencil, throwing his papers on the floor, and making it hard for other people to work. He refused to move to a side table to do his work, and opted to go down to the office again. He stayed down there for the rest of the day.
Throughout class, several students were being pulled out one by one to talk with the counselor because some kid was put in a headlock, thrown to the ground, and had his head/neck stomped on by someone. The kid said he didn't know who did it, so they were trying to interview people to get to the bottom of it. The counselor commented that it wasn't even a full moon...... so there must be something in the water.
The other amazingly memorable experience was at the end of the day. I told the kids that if we got everything accomplished that we needed to, they could have the last few minutes of school to play Heads Up 7 Up. We get homework passed out, bags packed, everyone is settled in... and I start to read to them from their read aloud book. After about a paragraph, they start talking. I stop them, remind them that my expectation is that there are no voices, and continue reading. After about another paragraph or two, they start talking again. I stop reading, and told them they are not acting like 5th graders, they are acting like second graders, and so I am going to treat them like 2nd graders. So, I tell them that they all need to put their heads down on their desk until I tell them otherwise. I made them sit with their heads down for about 1 minute (which really seemed like a long time) and told them that if they thought they could sit and listen quietly like would be expected from 5th graders, they could put their heads up. Most of them did, and I continued reading until the end of school. While this is just one of many classes, I think I like 4th graders the best. After taking some time to think about this class, I feel bad about how I handled "I". I want to return so I can do a better job of dealing with him. He obviously has some issues, and I don't think having a bad day at school helps at all. :(
A re-cap of the first part of my week:
Monday-- CHS choir. CAKE, as always. Or should I say cookies. The first 15 minutes of each class was filled with a lady who explained their upcoming fundraisers, and supplied Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. Ohyea, and that awesome student teacher who really does the teaching. I did jump in and sign with the concert choir because they were the biggest and I thought my voice would just blend in. It was okay.
Tuesday - 3rd grade; half day - Woodside. A great class! It was just the morning, and the teacher was in the building... she had been out the day before, and was preparing the morning materials as I got there in the morning. Everything went smoothly, and the kids were well behaved. I had a few minutes to chat with her at the end of my time, and she was really friendly and gave some great tips for subbing. I would definately return to her class again.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. Not all of the kids were Satan's helpers. The morning started off with me walking in to the office, only to find that there was no secretary today, so I wasn't able to sign in, and there wasn't an attendance sheet for my class. A nice gentleman walked me to my room, only to find that it was locked.. He went to get the janitor, who was on her smoke break, and assured me she would be by in 5 minutes. 8-9 minutes pass.. I'm now down to 20 minutes until school starts. I walk back down to the office to let them know I was still waiting to get in the classroom, so they paged her and she let me in. Fortunately, the teacher left excellent plans, and the first 45 minutes the kids were in art in another room so I had time to read over the math lesson, and familiarize myself with where things were in the room.
So, the kids return from art. "G" tells me that "I" threw his hat into the toilet, and K is telling me that W called him names, etc etc. I didn't realize 5th graders were such tattle tails. I get them settled down to do a quick 5 minute warm up in small groups. Somehow in the 30 seconds I wasn't facing the middle of the room, "I" had disassembled a marker, pulled out the filament, and had turned 75% of his desk green by wiping the filament all over his desk. Awesome. I ask him to clean it off and join his group. I teach the math lesson, which unfortunately for me, involved math manipulatives. Everyone with classes has stuck two isoceles triangles in to their glasses, and those who don't are either holding up triangles to their eyes to make glasses, or making towers or pictures out of the shapes. While they are working, "I" is stabbing his neighbor with a pencil, scribbling on other people's name tags, bouncing his pencil sharpener on his desk, and just being generally disruptive. Somewhere during the math time, he asks to use the restroom. Another boy goes after he got back, only to inform me that "I" put soap all over the boys bathroom floor. Obviously this boy is outta control, so I send him to the office.
After their morning recess, he returns to class, only to be sent back down to the office after about 15 minutes because he is again threatening his neighbors with a sharpened pencil, throwing his papers on the floor, and making it hard for other people to work. He refused to move to a side table to do his work, and opted to go down to the office again. He stayed down there for the rest of the day.
Throughout class, several students were being pulled out one by one to talk with the counselor because some kid was put in a headlock, thrown to the ground, and had his head/neck stomped on by someone. The kid said he didn't know who did it, so they were trying to interview people to get to the bottom of it. The counselor commented that it wasn't even a full moon...... so there must be something in the water.
The other amazingly memorable experience was at the end of the day. I told the kids that if we got everything accomplished that we needed to, they could have the last few minutes of school to play Heads Up 7 Up. We get homework passed out, bags packed, everyone is settled in... and I start to read to them from their read aloud book. After about a paragraph, they start talking. I stop them, remind them that my expectation is that there are no voices, and continue reading. After about another paragraph or two, they start talking again. I stop reading, and told them they are not acting like 5th graders, they are acting like second graders, and so I am going to treat them like 2nd graders. So, I tell them that they all need to put their heads down on their desk until I tell them otherwise. I made them sit with their heads down for about 1 minute (which really seemed like a long time) and told them that if they thought they could sit and listen quietly like would be expected from 5th graders, they could put their heads up. Most of them did, and I continued reading until the end of school. While this is just one of many classes, I think I like 4th graders the best. After taking some time to think about this class, I feel bad about how I handled "I". I want to return so I can do a better job of dealing with him. He obviously has some issues, and I don't think having a bad day at school helps at all. :(
A re-cap of the first part of my week:
Monday-- CHS choir. CAKE, as always. Or should I say cookies. The first 15 minutes of each class was filled with a lady who explained their upcoming fundraisers, and supplied Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. Ohyea, and that awesome student teacher who really does the teaching. I did jump in and sign with the concert choir because they were the biggest and I thought my voice would just blend in. It was okay.
Tuesday - 3rd grade; half day - Woodside. A great class! It was just the morning, and the teacher was in the building... she had been out the day before, and was preparing the morning materials as I got there in the morning. Everything went smoothly, and the kids were well behaved. I had a few minutes to chat with her at the end of my time, and she was really friendly and gave some great tips for subbing. I would definately return to her class again.